A white finger of light suddenly pointed skyward, giving the location of the cove. The Crayton slackened speed, then McNulty growled, “Hard over!”
“Hard over, sir!”
The steamer seemed to slip into the trough of the sea then slide behind white water. The tossing ceased!
As they came slowly alongside the cutter, her rails were lined with alert seamen. The cutter’s surgeon leaped aboard and disappeared below, followed by a hospital steward.
Wold paced his own bridge, pausing frequently to take in the details of the Crayton. She rode very low in the water. “Nasty outside, Captain?” he observed.
“Very, Captain,” McNulty answered. “The man’s bad hurt, I should say. The Vivian Gill has a gas engine to keep her moving, like so many fishing schooners. He got his foot into the machinery some way. Then in getting him aboard we smashed him some more, sir!”
“It don’t seem possible you could have taken him aboard, Captain, in that blow!” What a cargo the Crayton must have to make her ride so low. Only machinery or bottled goods could make a steamer ride like that. So this was the Crayton, the rum runner, a thorn in the Coast Guard’s side? Wold looked at McNulty’s stubby hands, resting on the bridge rail. The rain was whipping the flesh into a ruddy glow. Short, thick hands—the hands of a man who had learned his ground work in sail. They were hands similar to Wold’s. Scars from rope burns; scars from fistfights. The present generation of sailors was good enough, but it was the old sailing vessels that taught men the sea and its codes. Such codes were made by time; not by men who wrote them on paper and called them laws. Men got around laws through technicalities, but seamen followed the spirit of the code.
They were bringing a stretcher from the Crayton. A blanketed figure lay silent, but the chest rose and fell—like the sea beyond the reef. Sometimes it was quick, again it was slow, doubtful, as if the blow was almost over. The blanket blew back, disclosing a white face coated with the grease of the engine room.
The surgeon looked up briefly. “He’ll live, I think, but that foot will have to come off. Yes, he’ll live. The sea breeds men.”
Two of the Crayton’s crew leaped back to the deck of their own vessel as seamen took their places at the stretcher. The grim Coast Guard skipper cleared his throat. “Cast off the Crayton’s lines for’d and aft,” he shouted. He looked sharply at McNulty. “I suppose you’ll be proceeding, sir, the storm has about blown out.”